The paper presents an overview of definitions and concepts applied by the United Nations and further describes different concepts and methodologies that are available to quantify and measure disability. It presents findings of an empirical four country (Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago) study using recent census data. The study also looks into the accessibility of assistive devices, living arrangements and social activities of those affected by these ailments.
Long before the English became involved in the African slave trade, they imagined Africans as monstrous and deformed beings. The English drew on pre-existing European ideas about monstrosity and deformity to argue that Africans were a monstrous race, suspended between human and animal, and as such only fit for servitude. Joining blackness to disability transformed English ideas about defective bodies and minds. It also influenced understandings of race and ability even as it shaped the embodied reality of people enslaved in the British Caribbean. Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy provides a three-pronged analysis of disability in the context of Atlantic slavery. First, she examines the connections of enslavement and representations of disability and the parallel development of English anti-black racism. From there, she moves from realms of representation to reality in order to illuminate the physical, emotional, and psychological impairments inflicted by slavery and endured by the enslaved. Finally, she looks at slave law as a system of enforced disablement. Audacious and powerful, Between Fitness and Death is a groundbreaking journey into the entwined histories of racism and ableism.
Social inclusion is on the agenda of governments, policymakers, and nonstate actors around the world. Underpinning this concern is the realization that despite progress on poverty reduction, some people continue to feel left out. This report aims to unpack the concept of social inclusion and understand better how policies can be designed to further inclusion. First, the report offers a definition of social inclusion as the "process of improving the terms for individuals and groups to take part in society." It unpacks different domains of society that excluded groups and individuals are at particular risk of being left out of -- markets, services, and spaces. Second, the report discusses the most important global mega-trends such as migration, climate chnage, and aging of societies, which will impact challenges and opportunities for inclusion. Finally, it argues that despite these challenges, change towards inclusion is possible and offers examples of inclusionary policies.
Critical Conditions: Illness and Disability in Francophone African and Caribbean Women's Writing theorizes the unique interplay between history, science, the body, identity and writing that occurs in African and Caribbean Francophone women's writing from 1968-2003. These writings, it argues, disclose figures of illness and disability in the postcolonial context that challenge standard paradigms of women's bodily and psychic health established by Western colonial medicine and racial biology such as those that idealize cure, demand normativity, and assign tragedy to the "unhealthy."
'The Caribbean People' is a three-book 'History' series for Secondary schools. Tracing the origins and developments of the Caribbean region, Book 1 starts with Early Civilisation, Tribes and Settlers, followed by Colonisation and Plantations in Book 2. Book 3 looks at modern West Indian society, more recent history and current affairs.
Michael Beates's concern with disability issues began nearly 30 years ago when his eldest child was born with multiple profound disabilities. Now, as more families like Michael's are affected by a growing number of difficulties ranging from down syndrome to autism to food allergies, the need for church programs and personal paradigm shifts is greater than ever. Working through key Bible passages on brokenness and disability while answering hard questions, Michael offers here helpful principles for believers and their churches. He shows us how to embrace our own brokenness and then to embrace those who are more physically and visibly broken, bringing hope and vision to those of us who need it most.
This book is about being disabled and being poor and the social, cultural and political processes that link these two aspects of living in what has been characterised as a "vicious circle" (Yeo & Moore 2003). It is also about the strengths that people show when living with disability and being poor. How they try to overcome their problems and making the best out of what little they have. This book will appeal to academics, postgraduates and policymakers in disability studies, development studies, poverty and social exclusion
Disability is often mentioned in discussions of slave health, mistreatment and abuse, but constructs of how "able" and "disabled" bodies influenced the institution of slavery has gone largely overlooked. This volume uncovers a history of disability in African American slavery from the primary record, analyzing how concepts of race, disability, and power converged in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. Slaves with physical and mental impairments often faced unique limitations and conditions in their diagnosis, treatment, and evaluation as property. Slaves with disabilities proved a significant challenge to white authority figures, torn between the desire to categorize them as different or defective and the practical need to incorporate their "disorderly" bodies into daily life. Being physically "unfit" could sometimes allow slaves to escape the limitations of bondage and oppression, and establish a measure of self-control. Furthermore, ideas about and reactions to disability—appearing as social construction, legal definition, medical phenomenon, metaphor, or masquerade—highlighted deep struggles over bodies in bondage in antebellum America.
This volume aims to critically engage with constructs and experiences of disabled sexualities through Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. In doing so, it is hoped that the questions raised, relfections, analyses and arguments will provide readers with a catalyst through which to (re)think disabled sexualities from the perspective of the Global South. What makes this edited volume unique is besides chapters from emerging academics and disability activists who either live or work in the Global South, it also includes personal contributions from disabled people across the Global South. This volume takes a broad perspective on disabled sexualities addressing such areas as gender, race, culture, colonialism, body image, sexual pleasure, sexuality education, sexual access, sexual and reproductive health services, queer sexualities, and sexual rights and justice. The volume will be of interest to international and national organisations for people with disabilities, gender and sexuality researchers, health professionals, social workers, academics and students at all higher education and training institutions interested in disability, gender queer and sexuality studies.
